The First Space-Based Gravitational-Wave Detectors

Abstract

Gravitational waves provide a laboratory for general relativity and a window to energetic astrophysical phenomena invisible with electromagnetic radiation. Several terrestrial detectors are currently under construction, and a space-based interferometer is envisioned for launch early next century to detect test-mass motions induced by waves of relatively short wavelength. Very-long-wavelength gravitational waves can be detected using the plasma in the early Universe as test masses; the motion induced in the plasma by a wave is imprinted onto the cosmic microwave background (CMB). While the signature of gravitational waves on the CMB temperature fluctuations is not unique, the polarization pattern can be used to unambiguously detect gravitational radiation. Thus, forthcoming CMB polarization experiments, such as MAP and Planck, will be the first space-based gravitational-wave detectors.

5 pages, 3 postscript figures

References in corpus (2)

• Statistics of Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization
• Stochastic gravitational background from inflationary phase transitions

Cited by in corpus (15)

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• General Slow-Roll Spectrum for Gravitational Waves
• Clustering Fossil from Primordial Gravitational Waves in Anisotropic Inflation
• New Limits on the Polarized Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background at Subdegree Angular Scales
• CMB Polarization and Theories of Gravitation with Massive Gravitons
• What have we already learned from the CMB?
• CMB anisotropies induced by tensor modes in Massive Gravity
• Limits on the gravity wave contribution to microwave anisotropies
• On the frequency shift of gravitational waves